Mercy and Misery

Because I have little to no Latin, my guesses about the meaning of words are rarely correct and sometimes risible.

A friend gave me a gorgeous just-because gift this week of Year of Wonder: Classical Music to Enjoy Day by Day, by the wonderfully named Clemency Burton-Hill. Each day features a selection, and today’s is Jan Dismas Zelenka’s Miserere in C Minor. Whilst listening, I transliterated as something to do with misery, so perhaps passion/Easter season linked?

Not a bit.

“Be merciful.” Or “have pity.” An imperative of misereor.

Musically, these are usually settings of Psalm 51. And there’s a connection to the Greek, and thus to the familiar “Kyrie Eleison.” (Or, depending on one’s musical preferences and generations, the Mr. Mister song “Kyrie,” which offered a rare moment of musical connection between me and my peers during an era when I was at my stepdad’s church several times a week for hand bell practice, choir, or flower arranging: masses of hideous gladioli for funerals. Do you actually live in a vicarage, a bookish friend once inquired. Alas, no. The manse had been sold, some decades earlier, for development, and instead the U.C. minister was granted a small housing allowance.)

How goeth your Lenten season? Mine has involved given up too many things, so Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” is timely:

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

I’ve just lost a province, in an odd way, and I’m fearing that our nation is in danger of losing itself, which is a wretched set of circumstances and frankly much worse than I’d anticipated in 2025.

In this context, The Maid’s Secret by Nita Prose has been a tonic: a confection of a novel, and so very much better than the slim Christmas volume that was the last addition to this series.

Molly the Maid is back, and she’s participating in the filming of a television series that’s along the lines of Antiques Roadshow: participants offer up their trash and treasures for the scrutiny of experts, in this case two very different brothers. The hotel’s staff and guests are equally enthralled by the prospect that they are in unwitting possession of an object that might be worth a fortune.

The first hour is reserved for staff, and Molly has carefully packed up a box of trinkets. Her husband-to-be suggests she include her gold egg, a childhood favourite that was given to her only recently.

And of course it’s a Fabergé creation. Worth millions. (There are missing eggs, so mystery here abounds.)

This novel is a pleasurable romp, and Prose’s characters have significant charm. I retain my previous objections about some aspects of Molly’s characterization as intellectually limited or neurodiverse, but that’s played up less here.

With a wedding to anticipate and a missing egg to locate, this is a fun springtime read and it moves at a sprightly pace, which helps paper over all of the improbable events and portrayals. It’s charming and light, and it would make a wonderful unexpected gift if there’s someone on your Easter gift who would prefer a book to a chocolate bunny: it’s due out April 8th, and Easter is late, this year, as is Passover.

Before we get there, there is Purim for children to anticipate with pleasure this weekend. My grandmother was an Esther, and she was very proud to claim a regal connection by virtue of a shared first name.

And it’s also Eid, of course, as Ramadan ends with the month of March. Much to look forward to, for many adherents of multiple faiths.

Hoping for more mercy and less misery for the world in this season of renewal.

And even if you’re not a Nick Cave fan (thinking here, especially, of the family members who have sat through recordings and films with me, baffled, as I enthused), his Red Hand Files are quite wonderful. Few understand mercy and misery as profoundly as Cave.